sitemap.xml
XML file that lists a site's URLs for crawlers and AI agents; supports discovery, priority, and lastmod for efficient indexing.
Definition
A sitemap.xml file is an XML document at a fixed URL (e.g. https://example.com/sitemap.xml) that lists the pages on a site. Each entry typically includes <loc>, optional <lastmod>, <changefreq>, and <priority>. Search engines and AI crawlers use it to discover pages, prioritize crawling, and detect updates without relying solely on links.
The sitemap should be referenced in robots.txt via Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
Relevance to GEO
AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) use sitemaps to discover and re-crawl content. Keeping <lastmod> accurate and including all public pages improves agent discoverability and freshness signals.